Armor of the Fulminator

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"And my vanquisher will read that book, seeking the weapon, and they will come to understand me, where I have been and where I was going."The following is a verbatim transcription of an official document for archival reasons. As the original content is transcribed word-for-word, any possible discrepancies and/or errors are included.

Calus gestured towards the crackling Arc storm before him. The energy mass shivered, tethered to a golden spindle in the center of the chamber.

“You are marvelous,” he said to the Arkborn. His eyes drank in the flickering light, reflecting nothing. “You will cast a glorious Shadow.”

A panel on the wall lit up in Cabal: THIS SHIP IS TINY.

The emperor threw his head back and guffawed. “Compared to the interstellar conduits of your people anything would seem small. The Leviathan is formidable in its own right, I assure you.”

LEAVE MY PEOPLE BE. I WILL SERVE.

“Of course. You are all I need. Your very presence eviscerates flesh.” He gestured, and a metallic shell lowered from the darkness above. Now the Fulminator was free to walk the decks of her new flagship.

"Before my Councilors and I could finalize her containment armor, the very presence of the Fulminator assaulted the senses. She was breathtaking."

— Calus, Emperor of the Cabal

Statesman Tha'uul ran, and the Fulminator followed him. He was a minor diplomat who had played a part in the coup against the emperor. She wasn't certain of the details. The social dynamics of organics were difficult to grasp and she found them consistently irrelevant.

He had no idea she was still there. He thought he had outrun her, but the Arkborn knew that bipeds rarely look up.

She hovered far above her target, specific limiters on her armor disabled so that Arc could flow freely and lift her to the heavens.

Below, the statesman had chosen a brightly lit street that led to a dead end on the left turn in front of him. She descended.

"The Councilors devised a way for the Fulminator to escape her interstellar ark, to the outrage of her people."

— Calus, Emperor of the Cabal

The charred husk that was Statesman Tha'uul had revealed several things before he expired. He had mistaken her for a “warrior of the Light,” one of their “storm bringers” who apparently bore a resemblance to the Fulminator. She wished to see one of them. No biped was ever anything like her. She felt something like regret when Tha'uul said his people were mobilizing to annihilate them.

She made other reports to Calus, pertaining to the locations of Red Legion armories and fleet movements. He only cared about one. Now that the military was in power, in
Calus's absence, military parades on Cabal worlds were commonplace. Ghaul's flagship would take part in one such celebration, on Resignation Day, in the fringes of the Sol system, in honor of a mythic Praetor.

"What was she? A creature of the Light? Or the other end of the spectrum? The Councilors never finished their analysis."

— Calus, Emperor of the Cabal

The Fulminator noticed a difference in her fellow Shadows as they prepared for war.

The usual bickering, fostered by the multispecies makeup of Calus's enforcer group, vanished overnight as they faced the task they had gathered to complete: kill Dominus Ghaul.

Calus had recruited them through bribery or promises of wealth and resources for their homeworlds. None of them expected to survive their mission. The might of the Red Legion had grown vast. This acceptance brought them together.

The Fulminator didn't understand, or care. As long as Calus left the Arkborn to their interstellar conduits, she would do what she had done since the day she came aboard the Leviathan: destroy the enemies of the emperor.

"The Fulminator could directly afflict the nervous system of the organics around her. She was pain in all its shades. I will miss her."

— Calus, Emperor of the Cabal

Jarus's fighter soared like a blade into the throat of the Dominus's command ship. They hoped it wouldn't matter. Jarus died on impact. The Shadows burst forth from his shattered vessel, the Fulminator leading the charge.

Every limiter on her armor was undone. The unrelenting fury of her being loosed onto the bridge would permanently disable her. She would still exist, but couldn't anchor herself or manipulate anything around her. She would scatter to the winds.

Navigation displays exploded in a shower of sparks as she passed. The storm she had become reached an apex of intensity, and she reached out to scores of Cabal and swallowed them and she felt them die. She wrapped Ghaul in her light, enervated him in bursts of flaring Arc. She was fading. He would die. Wouldn't he?